


Revelations

by uniformly



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fic for Victory 2k12, Gen, Paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 12:05:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5047864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uniformly/pseuds/uniformly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dike learns the consequences of getting on the bad side of the wrong people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revelations

**Author's Note:**

> FFV 2k12. For the prompt: _Winters is the head of one of America's most efficient mobs. When one of their own gets shot, he and his associates will stop at nothing to find the perpetrators._

There's a gun in his hand. Beretta 92. Nothing special. The butt fits in his palm like he knows how to use it and his fingers follow the curve of the metal until his pointer's hooked around the trigger.

There’s a tang of gunpowder in the air, something Dike’s not sure he’s imagining. It's so strong and pungent that it’s almost as if he’s pressed the barrel of the gun into his mouth and allowed his tongue to cradle the metal.

The gun’s on the table now, the light from the single kitchen bulb reflecting off its body. Dike had never shot a man before.

-

“You’ve fucked up.”

The morning’s crisp, the forecast promising a fine day with little cloud cover. Dike glances from his paper. He’d been up checking the news, trying to find word on what happened the night before. So far it’s been nothing. But it’s not as if crime is an unusual thing in this little corner of the world. It was doubtful that it would get published at all.

Dike’s at a café not far from his apartment. He’s a regular customer. The owner knows him by name and gives him free slices of cake with his coffee.

The man who’s seated across from him Dike knows as Cobb.

Cobb’s got a long face with blunt features, nothing special. When he sits at the table across from Dike, his shoulders are hunched and his head is low like he’s afraid of being caught. Cobb’s eyes dart from person to person as he picks at Dike’s cake without asking.

“Excuse me?”

Cobb looks at him. “You know who you shot, right?”

“No one.”

Cobb finishes off the cake and licks the jam off his fingers. “You heard of Winters?”

Cool, calm, collect Richard Winters. The head of the biggest mob of the city. Dike had seen him once, back some years ago when he first started making a name for himself on the street. Winters’ control over the city had only tightened since then, all encompassing. You couldn’t sell an ounce without Winters knowing, can’t turn a trick without him being aware.

Cobb leans forward. “You’re gonna hafta watch your back.”

The morning commute is loud and Cobb’s words are lost beneath a truck quaking beneath its payload.

Dike chooses a more direct response this time. “What?”

Cobb shoots him a look and leaves.

-

The subway carriage is packed. Dike’s jammed between a young woman and another man as he tries to block out the conversation around him. He has a paper to his nose, but gives up when he reads the same line half a dozen times and folds it, tucking it away under his arm.

Dike stares forward, eyes unfocused on the advertisements that hang above the heads of the commuters. There’s an ad for toothpaste beside one for the emergency numbers. The white spaces between the blue checkers look a pale yellow in the cold florescent light.

Dike doesn’t know when he started listening to the men beside him. He’s not one to eavesdrop and it isn’t as if they’re loud. They’re quiet, heads bend together as they discuss a mutual friend in hospital.

Dike starts when the next stop is announced, and gets off even though it isn’t his.

-

Dike comes from a good family. His father has connections; he could have been in the army if he wanted, serving as an officer if he wanted. Dike had started on that particular path before discovering what he could achieve elsewhere. What type of power he could wield without the weight of responsibility.

No glory or Purple Hearts, just the weight of a gun in his pocket.

-

“What exactly do you do?”

“Sell.”

“Who’s your dealer?”

“I can’t disclose that information.”

-

“So you’re not dead yet.”

He’s at the usual café, in the usual seat with the usual order.

The weather’s foul that day— a heavy sky promising rain.

Cobb’s wearing gloves with no fingers. There’s dirt under his nails and he looks tired. He doesn’t even go for the chocolate brownie that Dike’s left untouched.

“Should I be?” Dike humours.

“Give it enough time and you probably will.”

Dike thinks of the men on the subway. And of the artificial light that shines down on them, turning their skin a sickly colour.

“Like you said,” Dike tells him as he breaks off a piece of brownie, pausing to eat it. “I’m not dead yet.”

-

It’s been a week since the shooting.

Just in case, Dike doesn’t let his Beretta out of reach.

-

The light in the store has the same too-bright glow as the subway carriage. It gives Dike a headache as he stands in line, one that starts behind his eyes before spreading outwards. Dike’s glad for the packet of aspirin he has sitting in his basket.

The guy at the head of the line is arguing about a product that’s been mispriced and the whole line seems to slouch with collective resignation. The cashier calls for a price check over the intercom, his voice coming patchy and static.

Dike concentrates on the magazine rack, absently picking the headlines as he waits. It’s about a minute until he notices it. Him. The man behind him. They’re in a queue, so of course there’s going to be someone behind him. But—

Dike glances to the security mirror that hangs at the corner. His reflection is skewed, bowed out at the centre where surface curves.

The man’s as stocky as his peripheral suggests, making up for his lack of height. Dike exhales, palms sweaty as he stares at the man’s reflection.

“Sir?”

The cashier’s voice breaks through Dike’s thoughts and the scene swims into focus.

Dike glances up. There’s no one in the mirror and he’s first in line.

-

“Who did I shoot?”

“Grant,” Cobb says.

There’s a grin on his face as he shares the name, like he’s pleased that Dike’s acknowledged it.

Dike traces Grant backwards, picking through what he knows until he’s established a thread that leads straight to Winters.

“One of Speirs’.”

“His very best.”

“What does that make you?” Dike asks. His mood lifts when Cobb’s expression hardens.

“The fuck does it matter,” Cobb says.

Dike has many flaws – his inability to read a person is one – but he’s been around Cobb long enough that his position is his sore point. Cobb’s been working the street for nearly a decade and has nothing to show for it other than the tough exterior he’s built.

“Who have they sent.”

It’s not a question.

Cobb looks him square in the face. “Everyone.”

-

Dike sells his product at a small strip not far where he lives. He’s got a loyal customer base, though it’s small and he sometimes has to dip into his savings to support himself.

He’s not on good terms with his family.

-

There’s a new kid in his complex. Dike catches snatches of him as he goes about his life. Young, redhead. He listens to the kid as he talks on his cell and pegs his accent as Philadelphian as they wait for the elevator together.

“I’m pretty sure we’ve got him,” the kid says.

There’s a pause before—

“Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on him.”

The conversation sticks with Dike for the rest of the day.

-

The doorknob rattles at two in the morning. The apartment’s small enough and the knob’s loose enough for the sound to travel through the walls until it’s all that Dike can hear. He squeezes his eyes shut and pretends not to.

He doesn’t change the locks the next morning, because to do so is to acknowledge what’s happening.

There’s nothing happening.

-

“Who are you?”

Cobb looks at him. “Wha—“

“No,” Dike slices through Cobb’s answer. “Who are you?

“T’fuck are you on about?”

This was how Dike had met Cobb: at the café, two days after he moved into the area and less than an hour after he had slipped a packet to a man and received notes in return.

And Dike can tell in the way Cobb speaks to him, that he knows what he’s asking.

-

Dike has never felt what it was like to be backed up in a corner. He has never experienced what it was like to go without food, without heating, without a cigarette and coffee.

He’s never felt the world tip under his feet, or the way someone could cease to exist. Or to have his head ring from the sound of crossfire, or the slick of blood on his hands.

He’s always been safe. Even if he only pretends in order to get by, he’s never really been touched by the pain of living.

-

But there’s still the growing urgency as the days slip by. It makes itself apparent in the men who walk behind him a step too close, in the snatches of conversations he hears; in being boxed in while driving along the freeway in a rented car.

Dike drives to the edge of town and skirts along the borders.

He returns home past midnight and finds that his apartment has been torn apart.

-

“You look like shit,” Cobb tells him the next day.

-

Dike wonders when time ceased to flow. Instead of the security of minutes, hours, days, he’s got the span of time between one incident and another.

Dike stops selling product in an effort to keep them at bay.

-

His father picks up the phone, but Dike can’t wrestle past what’s lodged in his chest. He doesn’t ask for help, and when his father asks—

“Who’s this?”

The only thing Dike can do is hang up.

-

Dike learns, the next day, that in the value of human life in the city isn’t worth much.

He feels cold as he walks home, and he knows it’s because he’s lost weight. He’s found it hard to eat for the last few weeks, a loss of appetite coupled with the lack of funds.

The part of town he’s in is gritty. The pavement is pock-holed and etched with graffiti; columns of asbestos masquerade as office blocks and the housing is a uniform grey, the strings of laundry the only break in monotony.

There’s a body in the gutter. It’s perverse in the way it lays there, splayed, blood coagulating at the nose and mouth. It’s only the early hours of decomposition, where the body turns stiff as the blood settles to where gravity dictates.

The victim is young, no older than thirty. He’s cleanly shaven and neatly dressed.

Dike stares at the body, and in the arches of the dead man's face he sees a familiarity.

It comes in a sudden clarity.

The bullet wound that leaves a neat circle at the temple— it’s mine, Dike thinks.

The sliver of blue that peek from the lids of the eyes, it’s his.

The slack clench of the jaw, it’s his.

He’s lying dead in the gutter.

-

There’s a group of men at the doors of his building. Dike recognises the redhead. He knows the bulkier, shorter man, olive skinned and serious. And then there’s the pair who shared the train with him: one dark and curly haired against the other man’s blond.

Cobb.

Dike hits elbows with one as he brushes past them, but doesn’t stop. He knows they’ll wait a required moment before following. They don’t need to be at his heels to find his door. They’ve been there before.

-

There's a gun in his hand. Beretta 92. Nothing special. The butt fits in his palm like he knows how to use it and his fingers follow the curve of the metal until his pointer's hooked around the trigger.

There’s a tang of gunpowder in the air, something Dike’s not sure he’s imagining. It's so strong and pungent that it’s almost as if he’s pressed the barrel of the gun into his mouth and allowed his tongue to cradle the metal.

The gun’s on the table now, the light from the single kitchen bulb reflecting off its body. Dike’s only shot a man once.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://scramjets.tumblr.com)


End file.
